Today’s New York Times includes a lengthy article titled “Caution: Angry Artists at Work,” by Roberta Smith. The theme of the article is that “The Republican Party’s choice of New York for its 2004 national convention, which has made a lot of people very nervous, may have done the city a favor.” How? The Republican convention has revitalized the city’s art world, which is putting on anti-Bush and anti-Republican exhibits all over town:
Political fervor is being translated into art in mediums that range from painting and sculpture to Web art to political ephemera. At the moment, President Bush and the G. O. P. are the chief art-world targets: no one seems to have a critical word to say about the failings of the Democrats.
What a surprise.
The article, and the art, are about as dumb as you would expect. Here is a sample:
The centerpiece…is Rachel Mason’s double portrait/self-portrait bust “Kissing President Bush,” a decidedly ambiguous work that is in some ways touchingly vulnerable. On first sight, the piece can trigger a number of associations: Jeff Koons’s marble sculptures, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, an incestuous Piet
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